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Friday, June 5, 2009

And I'm Off!

True to my character, as I write this I've almost-but-not-quite finished packing; I should get ready, eat dinner, and leave within the hour if I want to arrive at the airport at a reasonable time.

I spent last night and today trolling Tealit, a web site for English teachers and other foreigners in Taiwan. I sent off over a dozen e-mail inquiries about apartment room listings, and asked a half-dozen people if they were still looking for language exchange partners. I printed out maps and picked four hostels that are near each other, near TaiDa (National Taiwan University, at which I'll be studying), and highly rated on hostelworld.com. I also dealt with some paperwork, made copies of important documents, and downloaded some more podcasts for the plane ride. (One of them is a Chinese as a Second Language podcast that involves renting a room - could be useful!)

Right now it's time for me to send out a mass e-mail about this blog for those who are interested. Then it's onto more packing, dinner, buying a pocket Chinese-English/vice-versa dictionary (should've done that long ago), and a flight to Anchorage... and then Taibei on Sunday morning! (Where did Saturday go? It'll be eaten up by a combination of air time and that strange phenomenon known as the International Date Line.)

I'm thrilled. Weather.com tells me it'll even be a mostly sunny day, with no chance of thunderstorms - a rarity in northern Taiwan at this time of year, it seems. Next time I post, I'll be there... wish me luck.